


Offered Itself to Whoever Would Take It

by theswearingkind



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic was written for the annual <a href="http://picfor1000.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://picfor1000.livejournal.com/"><b>picfor1000</b></a> challenge, in which authors write a fic of exactly 1000 words based on a picture they are assigned.  <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/xylonets/61546464/">Here's the picture I received.</a>  If you're reading this (anybody?) and don't know anything about the guys it's about, they were the star quarterback and wide receiver for the University of Texas Longhorns a few years ago; they were also life-long friends who roomed together all throughout college (including, according to some reports I saw, sharing a one-bedroom apartment for a while).  </p><p>Title from E. L. Doctorow's novel <i>Ragtime</i>.  Un-beta'd.  </p><p><b>ETA</b>: Edited 5/24/12 - I was thinking about this the other day and how much I really, really regretted writing it in second-person, so, uh, I just changed it.  The freedom of having an audience of one!</p>
    </blockquote>





	Offered Itself to Whoever Would Take It

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the annual [](http://picfor1000.livejournal.com/profile)[**picfor1000**](http://picfor1000.livejournal.com/) challenge, in which authors write a fic of exactly 1000 words based on a picture they are assigned. [Here's the picture I received.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/xylonets/61546464/) If you're reading this (anybody?) and don't know anything about the guys it's about, they were the star quarterback and wide receiver for the University of Texas Longhorns a few years ago; they were also life-long friends who roomed together all throughout college (including, according to some reports I saw, sharing a one-bedroom apartment for a while). 
> 
> Title from E. L. Doctorow's novel _Ragtime_. Un-beta'd. 
> 
> **ETA** : Edited 5/24/12 - I was thinking about this the other day and how much I really, really regretted writing it in second-person, so, uh, I just changed it. The freedom of having an audience of one!

Two months of drought behind and maybe another two ahead, but right now the clouds are gathering in thick whorls of black, shutting out the heat-bleached sky and threatening storms.

Jordan’s outside, standing on Colt's front porch, head tilted up to look at the sky. Colt's A.C.’s been out for the better part of two days, and the back of Jordan's t-shirt clings, sweaty, to the small of his back. Colt comes up beside Jordan and tilts his head back, too, like he wants to see, but instead of staring at the clouds, he cuts his eyes over toward Jordan only to find Jordan already looking back, a big shit-eating grin creeping across his face. “Let’s go, huh?” he says. It’s a question, but not much of one; Colt's been doing whatever Ship says since they were kids.

It’s not hard to get out of town when town isn’t even a mile across. They could be in Abilene in an hour, but they head south on 83 instead, drive until they hit the flats, then turn and cut across some land that Colt's dad bought cheap a few years ago. His family uses it now for hunting, mostly, and Jordan’s with them as often as not; either one of them could probably drive it in their sleep. The shocks on the truck are for shit, though, and so Colt pulls off before he hits the treeline, cuts the engine, and stretches out in the truck bed to wait for rain.

There’s a six-pack on ice in a cooler between them – a risk, maybe, but not much of one, not for two kids all but guaranteed to start for Texas this year. “Here’s to stripping off the red shirt,” Jordan says, cracking one open before tossing the bottle opener at Colt. He catches it easy, like he’s the quarterback and Jordan's the receiver.

“Here’s to keeping your sorry ass in playing shape,” Colt replies, holding out his beer in salute. “Think you can manage that, Ship?”

Jordan grins, clinking his longneck against Colt's. “Hey, I was just waiting for you, man,” he says, leaning back against the cab and taking a long swallow, and Colt lets his eyes track the movement in the line of Jordan's throat before he forces them back out toward the field. “Can’t expect me to catch a pass from a decent QB, can you, McCoy?”

Colt laughs, but it gets caught somewhere in his chest, comes out more like a cough, and his cheeks heat up in the dark. “Guess not.”

“Wouldn’t even know how. Too many years playing with you. Makes it hard to adjust to someone who actually knows what the hell he’s doing out there.”

Colt manages a real laugh this time, but it doesn’t settle the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach, something hollow but full at the same time, like those half-seconds on Friday nights after the lights hit his eyes but before he's set foot on the field – the joy and the anticipation and the fear, always, the fear that this game will be the last.

There are some hits, after all, he just can’t take and still walk away.

Here’s the real risk, then, the one that could get him tossed off the team, out of the church – hell, out of his town, if he doesn’t get beat half to death in the meantime. Tuscola’s not Austin; there’s not a blue dot less than half a day’s drive away – not that he's much of a blue dot himself, but still.

“Hey, Colt,” Jordan says suddenly – or maybe not so suddenly; Colt's not sure how long it’s been since one of them spoke – and points up at the sky. “Would you look at that.”

Colt looks up, and he can just see, overhead, silhouetted against the dark clouds, the silver-white underside of wings, dozens of them, moving in formation toward the woods, back toward town.

“It’s just some geese, Ship,” he says, swallowing down the rest of his beer and opening another one, the condensation making the bottle slippery in his hand. “I don’t see the big deal.”

“They’re headed north, man,” Jordan says, like that explains everything.

“So?”

“So what did they even teach you in that little 2A hick school? You ever seen geese head north in August? It’s reverse migration.”

Colt still doesn’t see the big deal. “It’s a good thing you’re a decent football player, man, because you sure as hell aren’t getting laid from being such a fucking nerd.”

Jordan just laughs, quiet, and shoves him in the same way that he has since they were little kids, rough enough to count but not to hurt, always remembering he was older than Colt and, for most of their lives, bigger, too.

Colt was about to start his senior season and Jordan was headed out for camp his freshman year on the day Colt realized he’d finally outgrown Jordan – had gotten taller, even if only by a little, and broader, too. He’d driven up to Rotan before Jordan left, just wanting to wish him good luck in person, but instead Colt ended up half-tackling Jordan in the woods behind his house, happy for him but mad, too, that he was going somewhere Colt couldn’t, yet. Jordan threw him off without breaking a sweat, and Colt remembers what it felt like to realize how strong he really was, how much he’d been holding back.

His hand where it touches Colt's skin is cold and a little damp, and Colt feels goosebumps rise up along the curve of his bicep, defiant of the heat.

“It’s good luck, McCoy,” Jordan says at last. “Means good things are coming your way.”

When Colt glances back over, Jordan’s looking at him hard, giving him that endzone stare, and at some point Colt’ll have to stop thinking like a football player, but for now, it seems like the field’s wide open but he still can’t make the play.


End file.
